More at CUNY Are Passing Teacher Tests

By KAREN W. ARENSON

Published: September 15, 2000

The City University of New York, the city's largest supplier of teachers, is doing a better job of producing graduates who can pass certification examinations than it did just a few years ago, the State Education Department said yesterday.

Three years ago, the department threatened to close many of CUNY's teacher education programs unless more of their students passed the state's certification exams. In response, the CUNY colleges toughened their admission, curriculum and graduation requirements.

The department said yesterday that all but two of CUNY's eight teacher education programs had met a critical benchmark, calling for at least 80 percent of a program's graduates to pass tests in liberal arts and instructional skills.

City College and Medgar Evers College, the two that failed to achieve that rate, also appeared to show improvement, although the scores are not strictly comparable to those of previous years because the state is measuring them differently.

''CUNY is clearly making a major effort to improve its program,'' said Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner.

He said the CUNY programs may be in even better shape than the newly released data suggested. The test results were for students who graduated in the 1998-1999 school year, the latest year for which information was available.

''The data predates a lot of what CUNY has done in recent months,'' he said.

The department said data for the 1999-2000 school year would be released by April.

Statewide, 96 percent of the 13,626 students who took the liberal arts test passed. Ninety-eight percent of the 13,499 students who took the teaching skills tests also passed.

Medgar Evers and City College were among only four schools in New York State whose student passing rates fell below the benchmark of 80 percent. The other two were also in New York City: Boricua College, which has campuses in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

Officials at all four said they have improved their programs since the state issued new standards for teacher education over the last few years, and expected to show higher scores in future reports.

''The changes we have implemented should put us on track to exceed the state standards in the future,'' said Mwalimu J. Shujaa, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Education at Medgar Evers, where the passing rates were 66 percent on the liberal arts test and 74 percent on the teaching skills test.

At City College, 57 percent of the students who took the liberal arts test passed, the state said. Seventy-four percent passed the teaching skills test. The college's graduate students did much better; the school said 96 percent passed the liberal arts test. But while the State Education Department had criticized City College for the poor performance of its graduate students three years ago, those scores were not counted in the figures released yesterday.

Among CUNY's other colleges with teacher education programs, four of the six -- Brooklyn, Staten Island, Hunter and Queens Colleges -- had passing rates above 90 percent on both tests. York and Lehman Colleges came close to the 90 percent mark.

At Lehman, which previously showed passing rates below 65 percent, James Bruni, education dean, said much of the improvement resulted from improved methods of gathering data. In the past, the state had counted students who were taking one or two courses at a college but were not enrolled in its degree programs. Now it does not.

At Boricua, 56 percent passed the liberal arts test and 89 percent passed the test of teaching skills. Norman Ruiz, chairman of the school's education department, said some of his students struggled with a liberal arts essay because English was not their native language.

Ofelia Garcia, dean of the education school at L.I.U.'s Brooklyn campus, said many students come from neighborhoods with weak schools, and that it is important to work with them until they can pass the exams.

''These are people who are extremely good for the community and the schools,'' she said, ''and we have to work with them and take risks.''